1. Field of Invention
The present invention pertains generally to patient handling apparatus, and more particularly to an emergency trauma board for immobilizing traumatized victims during emergency transportation and through hospital emergency room procedures for diagnosis and treatment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the emergency transportation of victims of all sorts of accidents or sickness, such victims or patients are usually initially attended by paramedics or ambulance crews and placed on a conventional stretcher or mobile bed, and they are then generally transferred to a hospital emergency room examining table and again to an X-ray table and back again in a series of handling steps during a period when the nature and extent of injury may not have been determined and any movement of the patient may aggravate such injury. Although the immobilization of a trauma victim at the accident scene is generally recognized as a highly desirable expedient, it should also be recognized that the high morbidity rate occurring in hospital emergency rooms and trauma centers may be contributed to by the repeated transfer of victims through various diagnostic procedures rather than maintaining such victims in an immobilized condition throughout. A typical example of such adverse handling occurs during present radiographic (X-ray) procedures which, in a typical major trauma situation, calls for multiple plates of the cervical spine (lateral), chest and pelvic regions and/or head and neck. Most hospitals, clinics and trauma centers employ a separate radiographic department for almost all X-ray procedures, which requires patient transport from emergency and transfer or handling to accommodate the necessary X-ray plates. Portable X-ray equipment is increasingly being used in emergency room procedures, but still requires patient movement and/or re-positioning of X-ray equipment for separate plates whereas X-ray examination in situ will produce optimum evaluation in time and thoroughness with minimum risk to the patient.
In the past, various stretchers and like patient transfer apparatus have been proposed for immobilizing and transferring trauma victims and for lifting and handling invalids or the like with a minimum of body movement, as taught by U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,503,314; 2,565,761; 3,088,128; 3,097,020; 3,786,523 and 4,137,581, but none of these devices provide dual support surfaces for selectively accommodating victims with different types of injury or sickness requiring different emergency treatment. Similarly, other apparatus has been designed to minimize the transfer or handling of accident victims or the like during hospital emergency procedures of examination and X-ray, in the form of mobile X-ray transparent transfer tables as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,681,839; 3,188,659 and 4,193,148, but these do not teach a multiple purpose trauma board accommodating rapid sequential X-ray techniques in the critical examination areas while maintaining the victim immobilized throughout this process. Furthermore, such prior art does not take into account the need to immobilize a large number of other types of trauma victims through emergency room procedures for diagnosis and treatment, such as electrical shock, burn, heat stroke, cardiac arrest, chemical contamination or irradiation and like cases. Nausea, vertigo and vomiting are material factors in many of these cases and should also be taken under consideration in emergency patient handling and transfer situations.